Councillor Janette Williamson introduced a report which set out the Out-turn for the 2016/17 Financial Year.  Appended to the report were appendices for Revenue (including details of the reserves), Capital (including resources used to fund the Programme) and the Collection Summary (including Council Tax, Business Rates and Sundry Debts).  Appended to the report were three appendices:

·  Outturn 2016/17 Revenue

·  Outturn 2016/17 Capital

·  Outturn 2016/17 Collection Summary

The Cabinet was reminded that local authorities had to produce an Annual Statement of Accounts which demonstrated the financial performance of the Council for the year and the financial position at the end of the period.  The full Statement was approved by Audit and Risk Management Committee on behalf of the Council.  The report informed of the key elements.

The Collection Summary provided details on income collection performance and it was noted that any sums which were deemed irrecoverable needed to be written off in accordance with the authorisation processes set out in the Council’s Constitution. 

Councillor Williamson informed that throughout the Financial Year the Cabinet had received Revenue Monitoring reports for each quarter. In setting the Budget for 2016/17 it had been recognised that there were on-going financial pressures mainly within Adults and Children’s social care and it had been acknowledged that the savings programme was ambitious. These risks had been recognised and mitigated through the Revenue Budget Contingency of £12 million.

The use of this Contingency had been monitored through the regular Financial Monitoring reports. This had been allocated to People comprising Adult Social Services (£3.9 million) and Children’s Services (£5.25 million) and to Business comprising Assets (£0.5 million) and Remodelling (£1.7 million).  At the end of the year the balance remaining of £0.65 million had been reflected as an underspend.

  The Monitoring report for Quarter 3 (Cabinet 20 February 2017) had projected a General Fund underspend of £0.4 million and the final position for the year had been an underspend of £2.9 million.  Whilst overspending had been principally due to demand pressures within People for Adult and Children Care Services, this had been more than mitigated by underspending within Environment and Business Services. The latter largely attributable to the changes in Treasury Management and the adoption of the annuity method for calculating  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16